


Five times Helena needed a friend (and the one time she didn't)

by NuMo



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, if you are religious, or easily offended by alternative takes on god or god-like creatures, you should probably not read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 06:59:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9224093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: What if MacPherson hadn't been the only one to be around Helena directly after he debronzed her?I don't own the show Warehouse 13 nor its characters. I'm just playing with them. I'll give them back when I'm done, I promise.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Like in my tags, I would like to warn everyone that I offer, in one chapter of this fic, an alternative take on what a god, or God, is. And while I mean the Olympian gods in this instance, it can easily enough be read as applying to other gods too. I do not want to offend your religious sensibilities, dear reader. This is fiction. Mostly about a certain Warehouse agent, but a little bit about Olympians, too.
> 
> Proceed at your own discretion, please.

I can feel her long before I see her. She is a wide sea of dark, dark colors, roiling and crashing against each other, fighting to subdue her soul’s light; rage and grief and despair and loneliness and powerlessness fight for dominance so harshly that confidence, kindness and hope are confined to a small corner of her mind, hardly even participants in the struggle.

When I turn the corner and do see her, I almost stumble. I should be used to this by now; a lot of the times, people’s faces and demeanor show nothing of their depths. But in her there is an abyss so titanic, so all-encompassing, that I can hardly believe that she just sits there, that people just walk by. 

It’s a beautiful day when inside her, storm is raging darker than primordial night. She’s sitting on a park bench dappled with sunlight when inside her, blackness is tearing purple, green and red apart, and then itself. She looks up in confusion when I offer her the thermos mug of tea I brought, because the feel of her is English, and I remember how the English will love their tea. 

“Do I know you?” she asks, and I know I was right about the English from her accent, and right about her colors from her eyes. Just for a fraction of a second, they shoot their storm-tossed darkness at me, before she switches to small talk mode, but that fraction of a second is more than enough when I’ve felt her long before I saw her. When I know I was right about her needing me, perhaps more than anyone I’ve come across in my considerable lifetime.

“Not yet,” I reply easily. “But I hope that’ll change. I’ve seen you sit here all day, and I thought you could use a cup of tea.” I nod to where my apartment overlooks the park; not that I’ve seen her from any window of mine.

She narrows her eyes. The frenzy of dark colors within her is subdued by a brighter, sunnier green – curiosity. “Did you now.” She slowly takes the cup I’m still holding out, and figures out how to open the lid with a quick glance. “Assam,” she says slowly, inhaling the scent. 

“Loose leaf,” I nod. “With a dash of milk, for added gentleness.”

“Gentleness,” she says, and within her, kindness and hope flare in answer. She takes a sip, and they shine brighter in the light of pleasant, sky-blue surprise. “Oh, this is good.”

“Thank you,” I incline my head and smile at her. She hasn’t met that smile of mine before, so she has no defenses against it. It’s my second-strongest weapon. It can tell you, depending, that everything is alright with the world, that you’re safe, that things are going to turn out fine, that you needn’t worry. This one tells her that I’m a friend, and I can see it impact. “May I?” I nod towards the free part of the bench. 

“By all means,” she says, and pulls her discarded trench coat a bit closer to make space. 

I nod at that, now, and smile again. This is a bit funny, this smile says. “Bit warm for that, isn’t it,” I say. “Packed wrong?”

That question brings about quite the sea change. Darkness rolls back in, and her face closes again, if not all the way. Now that I’m as close as I am, I can feel she hasn’t traveled that far, not recently, anyway, but the mention of packing, of traveling, tears a barely-existent scab off a deep, shuddering gash of displacement. So, not traveled, but also very much not from here. Some of her peculiarities of speech, accent, posture suddenly make sense. She’s not from this _time_. Victorian England, not contemporary England, if I’m any judge. It would also explain why she does and does not, at the same time, feel old enough to have lived that long. This, together with the feeling of displacement she’s suffering from, make up my mind: time travel.

“Indeed,” she replies lightly to my original question, “and since apparently you’re from around here, this is probably as good an opportunity as any, to ask a local where I can purchase more suitable attire.”

Oh hello Victorian indeed, I think. “Sure,” I shrug. “As a matter of fact, I can show you.” I grin. “Take that mug along, the tea inside will stay hot for at least the next two hours.”

Her eyebrow shoots towards her hairline. “Ingenious.” She inclines her head towards me. “My name is Helena,” she says, and I can see she’s sincere.

“Phil,” I reply, with that little bit of subterfuge that is always necessary when I mention my name. She doesn’t notice, distracted as she is (as most people are, still) by the idea of a woman named Phil.

* * *

Clothes shopping with Helena is a delight, pure and simple. She seems like a completely different person. Gone are the dark roiling waves inside her, banished behind a tightly shut corner of her mind, and she (and I with her) basks in the kind of sartorial abundance available in a mid-size Midwestern shopping mall. She has an impeccable eye for how the available contemporary fashion might suit her, and charms the living daylights out of every sales person we run into. When she runs, headfirst, into the obvious ‘pants/panties’ distinction problem, she laughs out loud, and she’s beautiful inside and out, doing so. 

I can see, and I know she’s aware of it, too, that this kind of distraction helps her keep her demons at bay. But we both also know that there will come a time when the distractions will weaken, and the tightly shut corner will re-open and spew its boiling contents through her soul once more. 

Slipping my phone number into a folded shirt in one of the ever-growing number of shopping bags I’m carrying for her is easy. I hope she will, when the time comes, think well enough of me to call.


	2. Chapter 2

Her colors are even darker this time. She doesn’t even look up when I reach her, just accepts the proffered thermos mug and takes a short drink (to establish safe temperature), and a long one right after.

“I’m not even wondering how you keep finding me,” she says, without a trace of accusation in her voice. She is sitting on the same bench, after all, which cannot be coincidence. “Not after I failed to find any trace of you in any database across the country.”

I tilt my head. It’s been only a few days, and this Victorian lady is a hacker? That is impressive. I’d known she was intelligent, not by the force of her soul (many kinds of souls can harbor this kind of force, this kind of depth), but simply by being around her for the few hours that I’d been. “I’m flattered you tried to find me,” I say dryly. “But I could have told you that that approach would result in a dead end.”

“You don’t exist, then?” she asks, equally dryly. 

“Just as much as you do,” I give back, and her head snaps round to me at these words. I raise my hands. “Look, Helena.” Just as my smile is my most potent weapon, my direct gaze is the runner-up. “I’m quite certain you’ve traveled in time to be here. It’s of no concern to me. And neither should my identity be to you, beyond the fact that I offer my friendship to you.”

“You won’t ask if I won’t?” She sounds doubtful, and shaken, and I can’t fault her. 

I nod and shrug. “Pretty much.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you need a friend.” It’s not the answer to her question, but it puts her on the defensive, nicely distracting her. 

“Why?”

“Helena.” I give her a small, open smile that she doesn’t see because she’s glaring at the thermos mug. “If your facial expressions were linked to Mother Nature, this place would be a mess of thunder, lightning and hail, and everything combustible within a hundred yards would be ashes.” I lean back a little. “I’m not asking why. I’m just offering-”

“Your friendship, yes.” There is still a lot of doubt in her voice, but in her colors, I can see hope and her purple sister, longing, grow stronger by the second. “Because you think I need it.”

“Don’t you?” I ask softly, and she looks straight at me, and oh all ye Olympians, but the colors that bloom in her when she meets my eyes are breathtakingly beautiful and hauntingly aching. After a moment, she shudders and closes her eyes, but her soul is still reaching out to me, yearning so much I can see it restrict her breath. “Come on,” I say, getting up and taking her hand. And because she is still dazed by the raw emotions my question and my gaze has woken, she doesn’t even wonder where I’m offering to take her. 

-_-_-

 

She could see that my apartment does overlook the park, does have a view of the bench that she was sitting on, if she wanted. She doesn’t. She sinks into the proffered sofa corner without any kind of comment. She seems a bit shocked to find her here, and I meet her eyes openly to ward off the suspicion I can sense budding in her. 

“More tea? Or something stronger, perhaps?”

“Scotch, neat, if you have it,” she replies, and I bring out the bottle I bought yesterday, inwardly smiling that I was right about that, too. 

Her hand barely shakes when she accepts the glass, but the gulp she takes is quite large. Then she sets the tumbler down on the side table quite decisively, and turns to look me straight in the eye again. “I killed a man today.”

I nod. “I thought it might be something like that.” It certainly explains the more pronounced blackness of loathing and guilt I feel in her. 

“How can you take that so calmly?!” she fires at me. 

I take a deep breath, and give her a small, reassuring nod. “Friends don’t judge. I’d much rather hear the full story first.”

Her eyebrow comes up sharply again, then she takes another large sip of scotch and mutters, “I might as well, I guess.”

When she tells me her story, her voice is curiously detached, especially considering the turmoil of emotions behind her carefully neutral face. Not fitting in, from the very beginning. Excitement. Brilliance. Rejection. Loneliness. Contempt. Pride. Infatuation, love. Blooming, beautiful hope. Happiness, even bliss. Contentment, surging pride in her accomplishments. Joy at unleashed, fulfilled potential. A mother’s love for her child. Utter heartbreak. Devastating loss. Boiling rage, empty revenge, blind, hollow pursuit of anything, anything that might- more loss. More heartbreak. A long time of madness, of revolving around herself with no escape. In it, recurring attempts at processing, coming to terms, accepting, healing, all thwarted by wave after wave of loneliness, helplessness and self-loathing, crowned by rage deeper, darker, than ever before. 

Then, a few days ago, a sliver of hope, infinitesimal against the vastness of her pain. Skepticism, wariness, suspicion against the backdrop of ever-battling rage. A slightly larger patch of hope, unexpected joy, both short-lived, dashed in yet more despair and self-disgust. 

It is a rare story, and a very raw human sitting in front of me, rolling the empty tumbler in her hands. “Helena,” I say softly, and she looks up at me without hesitation, probably without thinking. 

The look in my eyes hits her hard, I can see that, both in her face and behind it. Understanding, empathy and acceptance are, I am willing to bet anything, not reactions she has encountered very often.

“Who are you?” Her voice is rough. 

“A friend, always.” 

“Why do you affect me so?” 

“I look, and see. I hear, and listen. I understand.”

“Not many people do that,” she whispers. 

I shrug. “Depends. Not many people will let people do that,” I reply. I do have an advantage over many people, but I have also met many people, and I can say for certain that what I’m doing is nothing uncommon, nothing special. Well. Not all of it, anyway. After all, I'm not 'many people'. I'm not human, for a start.

“What do I do, Phil?” she asks. “Where do I go from here, now?” There is a little bit of hope in her voice again. I have given her hope. My heart swells inside of me. In a manner of speaking.

“Well, what are your options?” I ask in return. 

“Give myself up to the Warehouse, and hope for their understanding,” she smiles briefly at me, “and mercy. Or turn my back and run from the whole thing, until my dying day.” Her colors darken perceptibly. “Bring about that dying day.” She looks at the empty tumbler again, and I refill it wordlessly. She takes another, smaller sip, and continues, in a somewhat calmer voice nevertheless roughened by alcohol, “or I guess I could work on my redemption.” She gives the glass a tiny smile. “Show them I’m a worthy and true Warehouse agent.”

The Warehouse. I sigh. Of course. I’ve come across _that_ particular tangle. It doesn’t matter here and now, though, so for the now, that part remains unsaid. “Which do you prefer, and why?” I ask.

“The latter, of course. Ending one’s life is so dramatic, don’t you think?” She looks at me sidelong while sipping on her scotch, and I can’t help but laugh, because I can see that her decision has settled a good many waves in the storm that is her soul. For now, at least, hope shines over the waves distinctly, if not brightly. There is a face in that gleam – I’m close enough to her, both in proximity and in budding friendship, that my feeble telepathic talent is able to tell me that. I can’t see many details, but she did just tell me about encountering Warehouse agents, and I did catch the joy and hope that that encounter had set off in her. 

She has a chance of no longer being lonely, and she knows it.


	3. Chapter 3

She doesn’t call, but I do receive a text from her, with a hotel name, phone number, and room number, and a plea to call. When I look the place up, it’s in Moscow, Russia, of all places. 

I shrug and translocate - she doesn’t need a call, I’m quite certain - and knock on her door. I can feel her behind it, feel alarm flare up at the sound, and a suspicion that is tinged by the tangle of emotions that is how, I know by now, she perceives me. 

“It _is_ you,” she gasps when she opens the door. 

I raise an eyebrow. “At your service,” I reply.

“But… how…” Then she runs her hand through her hair and sighs. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose, and I’m glad you’re here. Do come in, please.” She turns and steps away from the door. 

She sounds perfectly polite, but the control she has on her emotions is shaky at best. There is the dark, gunmetal grey of exhaustion, not the kind you get when you don’t sleep enough (although that is present too); the kind you get when a massive adrenaline rush has gone and left you stranded. She has been scared to death, from the scope of it, or at the very least been in a life-and-death situation, and is suffering its aftermath. There is also, underlying it, fear that is battling with her hope, the particular hope of being back at the Warehouse, so I’m guessing that whatever has happened has something to do with that. 

I won’t ask, though, not right now. But I will remember, and I know there is something I can do about it, in the future, and it’s important that I do it because this hope needs to not die. There is still far too much darkness swirling inside her and around her; she _needs_ that hope, and the world needs her to have that hope. _That_ much darkness. Enough to not just destroy her, but to take a great many good things, good people with it. _That_ is a future I need to help prevent, if I can.

But right here, right now, her shoulders are shaking with tension, and that and the greyness suggest a different solution to me. 

I spread my arms. 

She steps into my embrace very, very stiffly, but without a moment's hesitation, and that alone tells me she desperately needs me here, and not on a phone. Her breathing is far too measured to be called ‘normal’, too, and her colors tell me she’s barely clinging to a semblance of calm. My arms are correspondingly gentle and reassuring when they slowly find their spots on her back – I’m not surrounding her, she needs to feel that she can step away again, if I’m any judge (and I’m a good one, in these things). 

Even that small of a contact has her emotions in uproar, though. There is a hint of ready-to-bolt fear, yes, but there is also a wealth of purple longing again, and the tiniest foothold of the banked-fire red-orange of creature comfort. I consciously refrain from musings about when she has last been hugged, because she certainly doesn’t need me to be sad on her account. No, ‘reassuring’ is what she needs from me, and it’s what she gets. I am a good pillar of strength, I do know that. And my hugs would be famous, if they weren’t so intimate. As it stands? They're my most effective weapon, if you want to call them that. The most effective thing in my arsenal, at any rate.

I don’t change the position of my arms, don’t change my stance. We’re quite the statue for a while, in fact. Gradually, her shoulders become less tense, as time and more time shows her that I’m not leaving, that she can, indeed, relax into this. It takes her closer into my embrace, makes her burrow her face into the crook of my neck, and even though her arms are still somewhat of a barrier between us, I know that that is because she simply wants to be held, and doesn’t want to hold in return, and that’s very fair on a day like this. 

As tension drains slowly out of her, she starts shivering, and there’s an icy white, bitterly cold blue in her memories that feels a bit out of place in a tolerably cozy hotel room like this, but then, this is a Warehouse mission; I suppose anything can happen. That white blue makes her _feel_ cold, though, inside and out, and contributes to her shivers, so I slowly maneuver us towards the bed, and sit us down, and one-handedly wrap a blanket around her as much as I can.

She ends up in my lap, legs across mine like a tired child, and that feeling and the blanket and my arms around her and her body weight leaning against me all contribute to how, slowly, the cozy orange of creature comfort spreads inside her. 

She is too exhausted to cry, or maybe she is someone whose reaction to adrenaline ebbing away doesn’t consist of tears. Her breaths do get steadier, though, the longer I hold her, and the shivering slowly subsides, as well. 

“Can I ask you a favor?” she asks, and adds, “it might sound... odd, and obviously you would be free to refuse.”

“Ask away,” I smile.

“I... haven’t really slept since I was debronzed.” She swallows. “I... It seems I can’t.” She straightens up enough to look at me, and the gunmetal grey is almost gone, replaced by the duller, slightly lighter shade of (relatively) simple sleep deprivation. “My thoughts... they turn, this way and that, and I...” her gaze drops to her hands, now clasped in her lap. “Do you have any... can you do anything about that?” She huffs. “I would hate to resort to soporifics. The thought of entrusting myself to artificial alteration of my brain chemistry does not sit right with me for some reason.” She looks up at me again, and the grey is shot through with purple longing and small tendrils of green hope.

I take a deep breath. “There might be something I can do, although I don’t know how efficient it will be,” I tell her. “It might sound... odd,” I wink at her, “and obviously you would be free-,”

“-to refuse,” she actually chuckles at having her words thrown back at her by me. The wave of that amusement is small, but it’s there. “Acknowledged, and appreciated. What is it?”

Instead of replying with words, I... well. Imagine someone turning up music, from ‘near silence’ to ‘somewhat audible.’ Now imagine that I’m doing that not with music, but with a projection of an emotion – ‘safe. You’re safe here. No harm will come to you. I will watch over you.’ That kind of emotion. 

Her face slackens as she notices it, and her eyes grow large as purple longing swells inside of her. Then she collects herself a little, detaches herself a little, and I turn the dial back down to ‘near silence’ again. 

She nods. “That might actually work, you know,” she muses. 

“I am certainly willing to give it a try if you are,” I nod back. “And if it feels too weird, I can stop anytime.”

“Again: acknowledged, and appreciated.” She smiles at me, allowing her tiredness to tug at the corners of it. “Would you excuse me while I...?” She points towards the bathroom, and I have to chuckle. So formal, while she’s sitting on my lap, wrapped in a blanket.

“Go right ahead,” I grin. 

-_-_-

Fifteen minutes later, she is back, clad in very appropriate flannel pajamas. I have pulled a chair up next to the bed, since I don’t want to presume anything – she’s English, after all, and Victorian to boot. 

“Depending on what would feel better to you,” I say, “I can sit here, sit on the edge of the bed, or lie down with you. It’s large enough, that much is certain, unless you’re the kind of person who hogs the whole bed regardless of size.”

“I don’t believe I am,” she says primly. “What do you suggest is best?” she asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“It doesn’t make that much of a difference to me,” I shrug. “This is purely about what _you_ feel comfortable with. Because if you don’t, nothing I do will have any positive effect, now will it.”

She chuckles. “Quite.” Her eyes grow serious and fall to her hands, again clasped in her lap. I can see her decision-making process in how the colors swirl around in her soul – not long, though, and I’m grateful. She is not a ditherer, and I like that. “If you wouldn’t mind... and if it wouldn’t be too presumptuous – you did offer, after all... could you... would you hold me again?” She swallows, and looks up at me suddenly, and I’m caught by a sudden rush of determination to trust, from her, and pride, from me. “I... will admit I crave the comfort of an embrace, and I am certain it would help matters.” 

My smile is gentle, and her answering one, while a good deal smaller, is nevertheless full of the same determination I felt just a moment ago. 

It takes us a bare minute to get under the sheets and for me to wrap my arms around her again. “Here goes,” I murmur when she has settled, and start wrapping her in reassurance. 

“Thank you,” she heaves a heartfelt sigh. I’m oddly proud of her, of both of us, but mostly her – for her resolve to trust me, to work towards light, not dark, and to accept my help, accept the fact that I can help her in this peculiar fashion. She falls asleep barely five minutes later, and sleeps for almost twenty hours, deeply enough for me to get up after six of them (when it grows light outside) and hang the 'do not disturb' sign on the doorknob. As I said, it doesn't really matter how close I am when I wrap somebody in emotions. Not halfway around the world, for sure, but inside the same room? Not a problem. She also sleeps through me ordering food for her, for breakfast (or dinner), after twelve more hours. When I get up to let the room service person in, she starts stirring. I write her a quick explanatory note, set it among the covered plates, and, after a quick look to make sure she's not quite awake, I take my leave. Mornings after are awkward, and this isn't even _that_ kind of morning after.


	4. Chapter 4

“We don’t take well to seeing you here,” one of them spits at me. 

I shrug. I know that. “I still needed to come here and say my bit. I can’t help if you’re afraid of me.”

“We are not-” he bustles.

“Your colors beg to differ,” I reply sweetly.

“Aron,” a far calmer voice reprimands. Then Adwin Kosan turns to me and nods. “Say your bit, then. I daresay we know what it is about.”

“It was happenstance that I met her,” I began. “I want to make that clear. I didn’t know that she was involved with the Warehouse at the time. Granted,” I shrug, “if I’d known, I still would have gone to her anyway. You know that much about me, I trust.” I haven’t exactly met _these_ Regents before, but I’m aware that the Warehouse, in general, has information about me. A file, probably. 

Kosan nods, and I go on. “Helena Wells was in extreme emotional turmoil. She was when she was bronzed,” I spit the word, because I detest the practice, “and she was _while_ she was bronzed. I have no idea if you had forgotten about her or intended to take her out of the bronze at some point,” and, really, my tone couldn’t be more deprecating, but seriously. Seriously. Bronze! “But really, what she needed wasn’t infinite solitary confinement with full sensory deprivation; what she needed was therapy.”

“Don’t tell us _you’re_ a therapist,” the one next to the one called Aron sneers. 

“No. Seriously, have you read my file at all?” I challenge her and she looks away and huffs. 

“We have,” says another, who looks far calmer. “Can I ask a question about your… abilities?”

“Sure,” I reply. 

“Is it a bit like what our archivist can do? Read people’s auras?”

My eyebrows shoot up. “She can, can she? Interesting. It’s somewhat similar, but I guess I can read people in a more detailed way. I perceive their emotions, and when I am very close to them, both physically and emotionally, I can perceive their thoughts as well. The loud ones, anyway. I also have the ability to broadcast emotions, although that depends on if a person is receiving, as it were.” She frowns in confusion, and I clarify, “people can block me out.” 

“If they know what you’re doing,” Aron grates, and I think I understand now why he’s afraid. 

“Don’t worry, Aron,” I tell him. “I’m not doing it all the time; I’m not doing it right now, and really, it works best if what I’m sending out is what the other person wants to hear, in a manner of speaking. And I ain’t got what you seem to believe I should be sending.”

Kosan is the first one to work this out, though I notice the friendly woman hide her smile a second after him. 

“Thank you, Miss… Phil,” she says. “I think I understand now. Please do continue with what you were saying.”

“Thank you...,” I tilt my head in question, and her smile blooms openly. 

“Jane,” she replies, “Jane Lattimer.”

“Thank you, Jane,” I say, and smile back at her, without any agenda behind it. Then I turn back to address all of them again. “You’re all aware of how Helena was debronzed and what happened after. She was revived, not to friendly faces and helping hands, but to a rogue agent bordering on psychopath. I’m here to tell you, since nobody else probably will, about her emotional state during that time, so you can decide how you want to proceed.” I take a long breath, both to collect my thoughts and to give them time in which to voice theirs. Not a one of them does. 

“I would like to state again, for the record, that I am not a therapist, or psychiatrist. If you want that kind of assessment, go ahead and ask someone from those professions.” Again, I pause. Again, no one speaks. I continue, “Helena was and is in a highly unstable place. Her emotional state can best be described as-,” and I _show_ them. 

Oh yes, Regent Aron, I can broadcast. And I have a very good memory. When I sense another person’s emotions, I do so in very clear detail, especially up close. And I can replicate those details, excruciatingly accurate. Quite the fitting adverb, there, actually. 

They all were hanging onto my words. They all wanted to hear, as it were, what I was going to tell them. 

Receive it, they did. 

Nice? Certainly not. But then I never said anything about being nice, did I.


	5. Chapter 5

“I almost lost her, Phil!” Helena’s voice is raw, and so are her emotions. “I almost killed her.” She whirls around to me, in yet another hotel room somewhere in South Dakota. “I can’t-” her voice breaks, and I spread my arms, and she doesn’t hesitate. 

She clings to me like a lifeline, and her emotions certainly support that metaphor, churning and tumbling and crashing waves that they are, firmly back in the blacks and dark greens and blues and reds, breaker after breaker of horror, fear, panic, cynicism, rage. I hold her gently while her fingers clench around the fabric of my shirt, threatening to tear it apart. Pain racks her body, as surely as a real, physical instrument of torture would. 

“How can anyone stand this?” she whispers after a while. “When I’m with her...” she huffs a laugh that vacillates between hysteric and bitter, and steps away from me, replaces my arms around her with her own. “I thought, at first, it was simply the joy of having a purpose again. I thought all that positivity was directed at the Warehouse, at me being an agent once more.” One hand detaches itself and gestures vaguely. “Certainly I flirted. I constantly do. It is invigorating and distracting at the same time, is it not?” I give a non-committal shrug. I know how badly she needs distraction, at times, and yet flirting occasionally results in things, emotions, in other people, and to evoke those as a distraction? But. Friends don’t judge. They want to hear the whole story.

“ _She_ is invigorating and distracting. Finally working together with a woman who doesn’t just match my wit, but who isn’t afraid of it, who is proud of it, in fact, who has grown up believing, and being _encouraged_ , that she can do anything men do, and do it just as well if not better – invigorating!” Again, she gestures. I nod. I do understand that, oh I do. “It was all I had hoped for, for the future, and more.” Her face clouds, and her emotions, so full of giddy, bright, swirling colors, darken as well. “And then out comes that thrice-damned time machine, like a devil ex machina, and-” again her voice breaks. This time, her emotions don’t cry for a hug, though, so I keep my distance and let her work through it. 

“I knew it was a bad idea,” she murmurs. Then, louder, “I _knew_ it, right there and then! But I also knew it had happened already, and refusing to let them use it would result in a paradox, and while the Warehouse can handle paradoxes, I have been told not to add to their number. So there it was. And when the electricity faltered for the first time, I realized that my fortitude wasn’t founded in being back with the Warehouse, not _just_ founded in being back at the Warehouse. It was her, and I was losing her.” She turns and looks at me, and I can see full well the impact that realization has had on her. “I can’t lose someone I love again, Phil,” she murmurs in a broken whisper. “I can’t.”

I agree – she is close to breaking, that much is visible. Understandable, too – she allowed herself to hope, allowed her guards to drop, allowed the happiness that was offered her to get under her skin. But it’s right there, under a person’s skin, that happiness can wreak the most devastating havoc. “You didn’t lose her,” I reply, for what it’s worth. 

“Not this time,” she hisses darkly. “This is not a line of work that is particularly safe, after all.” 

I nod, and offer another embrace, which she accepts, albeit more slowly this time. ‘Grim’ is the best word for her colors right now, grey ‘grim’ and steel-blue ‘clenched’ and brown ‘resigned’ with a dose of vomit-green ‘cynic’ again.

It’s rage that crests next, however. She abruptly pushes herself away from me, and I can see the dark red boiling up in her, whipping, lashing tendrils of fury against fate, history, injustice; anything, really. Her mouth tries to form words, her hands, again, form vague gestures in the air, but in the end, she just clenches them and lets out a roar, followed by “Why?!” She whirls around to face me, and I half expect flashes of blood-red lightning to shoot from her hair. “Why can’t I... WHY won’t fate allow me some... some _respite?!_ ”

And as if that outburst had spent all her rage, despair and self-loathing now drown out the dark red with waves of coal black and putrescent yellow, and she sinks to her knees. “Why?” she whispers. 

“Because you are who you are,” I reply, and her eyes shoot up to me in disbelief. I spread my hands apologetically. “Helena, let me tell you one thing – I’m pretty sure you know it already, but it bears repeating: More than any woman of your time, you made choices. You took them from people who thought they could make them for you, and you made them, for yourself. Your choices brought you here, for good or bad.” I step over and sit down next to her. “Whatever you make of your ‘here and now’, Helena, at least you have that one thing.”

“It’s my own fault, you mean?” Her voice is bitter enough to etch metal. 

“In a way,” I shrug, and her rage darkens. “Think about it, though. You have always had choices, from back in the beginning when you refused to let other people run your life for you, right up until today, when you can choose to step away from the Warehouse and the pain it deals you, or stay and fight.”

“Fight for what?” she huffs.

“Fight for your love. Fight to keep her safe. Fight together, to keep the world safe.”

She sighs. “Fight to prove myself – I am quite certain that’s not over yet.”

I nod. “If you say so, it probably isn’t, yeah.” I take some confidence from how much calmer her inner turmoil seems when she thinks about whomever it is that she loves. Which inspires me to say what I say next, which is quite unprecedented. “She’s a Warehouse agent, right?” I barely wait for Helena’s nod. “Because, you know, your thoughts of her are inseparably meshed up in this...” my hands flutter around one another, trying to describe what I see, “this... _profusion_ of thoughts, concepts and emotions that represent the Warehouse in your mind. The miraculous thing, though, is that both that profusion,” I hold up my right hand, “and this beautiful, gentle, admiring, appreciating, whirring ball of love connected to it,” I hold up my left and she stares at it, mesmerized, “keep your darkness at bay with such ease.”

“She does that,” Helena croaks.

“I know. I can see it.” Another idea shoots through my brain, and is promptly put into action. “Here-,” and I _show_ her. Show her what I see, what I saw back when I first perceived her. The rage, the grief, the loneliness, the, yes, madness. And the potentialities, the large, threatening, destructive masses of pitch black and screaming red swirling around the brittle, narrow, faltering path ahead, held in check again and again by nothing but a tiny mote of light and-

“My choices?” she asks, and I nod in confirmation. 

“Always, ever, and only your choices,” I say quietly. “I’m not a prophet, that’s not what this is. I can’t see the future. What I can see is people’s potential, at best. Choices that they, or parts of them, want to make; choices that they’re likely to make in their current emotional state, that kind of thing, you know?” She nods, and I continue, “now let me show you this.”

This time, I show her what I can see when she thinks about the Warehouse, and that agent inside it. The gentleness, the wit, the care. The love. The fear. And the potentialities surrounding this particular current state – the darkness, still present, but held firmly back by a network of faces, ideas, hopes, concepts, and the swirling, golden flashes of inspiration, contribution, invention, promise.

Her eyes are bottomless when I’m done. “It seems as if there are two souls beating within this chest, does it not?” she whispers. 

I weigh my head. “That’s not how I would put it.”

“Is that why you approached me, that day?” 

“Well.” I reach out a hand, and she takes it, and I smile at her. “You needed a friend.”

“I still do.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” I grin. “But what you also need is reinforcements.”

“Reinforcements?” she asks, and her bafflement is a delightful lavender. 

“Yup. You need people who bring out that second state of mind in you. On your own, the first is far too enticing.” I squeeze her hand when she opens her mouth to protest. “Don’t get me wrong – there’s a good reason for your rage, and your grief, for all of it. Many good reasons, in fact. I’m not telling you to switch it off, because who if not I knows that that’s impossible.” 

“Oh I have a pretty good grasp of it, myself,” she growls, and I nod. 

“I know. I’ve seen glimpses of how you battled with it.” She drops her head, and that feeling of defeat inside her needs to be stopped right now. “You haven’t lost that fight, Helena. You’re still in the middle of it, and I daresay it’s going to last for a good long time to come.” She grits her teeth, but she also takes a much more determined than defeated breath. I squeeze her hand again, and she looks at me. “But now you have allies,” I add. And smile. “That loneliness, Helena? That can be the first to go.”

She almost smiles back, and then her emotions darken again. “But the price,” she whispers. “Phil, I...”

“What is the price for staying apart, Helena?” I ask her softly. “I know it’s hard to keep your heart open when it can be torn asunder any minute, not through your choice, but through what life throws at you. I know it’s hard to keep trying to stay in the light when people are expecting you to go towards the dark, pushing you towards the dark, enticing you to join them in the dark, tell you it's your place, in the dark. I know it’s hard to keep looking your pain in the face, and lift your chin and tell it that it won’t break you. But, Helena.” I cup her cheek, and give her a direct gaze and a smile, and see it impact. “It’s worth the struggle, and you know it. Much, much more than giving in will ever be. Because only through this struggle, you can have moments when you...” I close my eyes for a moment, searching for a suitable memory, then laugh out loud. “Hold on tight to another woman while you both hang from a grappler line?!”

“Oh!” Her thoughts jump to that scene, too, and oh, how she blushes, inside and out. 

“My point exactly,” I say firmly. “Allies.”

“I do like myself when I’m in her company,” Helena says breezily, then chuckles. “Which, again, is your point, is it not.”

I only grin at her.


	6. Chapter 6

When I knock on the door of the hotel room that Helena had indicated in her last text, I can feel that there are two people behind it. I recognize one of them as Helena, and realize who the other is from Helena's feelings towards her. 

And then the door opens and I see them both clearly. Recollection opens a drawer and my eyes grow round when I recognize Myka Ophelia Bering, woman grown, and apparent Warehouse agent. 

“You? But…” she all but splutters, and Helena is completely mystified. 

“Time for explanations, I guess,” I quip feebly, and close the door behind me. 

Once we’re all seated – and it’s really sweet how meticulously Helena takes care to sit not too close to Myka, but also very much not too far away – I look at Helena first. 

“You already have some idea about what I am, am I right?” I ask with a slight smile. 

She raises her eyebrows. “I thought I did, yes. I’m not certain how this,” her hand points to Myka, who is still _staring_ at me, “fits into my theory, however.”

“You were the librarian in Colorado Springs library, South branch,” says Myka. “How… Why haven’t you grown older?” 

I chuckle. “Oh, I have,” I reply. “It just doesn’t show.” Then I turn to Helena. “What is your theory, then?”

“That you are in some fashion related, or similar to, Irene Frederic, caretaker of the Warehouse,” she says. 

“I’m thinking ‘artifact’, myself,” Myka says. 

I chuckle. “Eirene and I do share having a Greek name,” I say. “But no, I'm not using any artifacts.” I spread my hands. “This is all me,” I grin. 

“Ah, but are you all human?” Helena asks, and Myka gasps. Helena shrugs. “It’s the next logical assumption. Myka, we have never come across, heard, or read of any human who could do what Phil can do, without the aid of an artifact. So if she does all this without the use of one, we can at least theorize that she is beyond human, or a different species altogether.” 

“Helena, you can’t mean-”

“She isn't wrong, Myka,” I interrupt her, my voice and eyes as gentle as I can make them. Then, as if revealing a big secret, I tell them both, “my first name is Philia.”

“Greek for-” Helena begins, realization dawning.

“-friendship,” Myka completes, and this - ending each other’s sentences: it’s so sweet that I laugh.

“That’s me,” I tell them. 

“What do you mean, that’s you?” Myka asks, cross and confused, magenta and lime green.

“Allow me one very important question, before I tell you more,” I say, turning serious. Upon receiving two nods, I continue, “are either of you believers in any god or religious concept?”

Two very decisive shakes.

“Alright, then, here we go. This might take a while.” I clear my throat. 

And then I tell them how, millennia ago, a group of non-corporeal beings had visited Earth, and found it so entertaining that they decided to stay. And play gods. They had the powers – telekinesis, telepathy, switch between body shapes, the works. Some more so than others. And when they got bored of their games, they left. 

“I was one of those ‘others’," I say dryly. I've been resigning myself to that for a long time. "And because the Olympians, as they had called themselves in the end, were a selfish bunch, they didn’t have a roll call before they left, so they forgot a few of us who didn’t quite have that ‘leave a planet’s gravity well’ thing down as well as they had.” There might have been a hint of bitterness in my words, I admit. Despite the millennia. 

“A few?” Myka asks breathlessly. 

“Oh yes,” I tell her. “Most of us were not really happy about being stuck here. Some were desperate enough to let themselves die on the spot,” I nod at Helena’s obvious disbelief, “oh, yes. You have to understand – most of the Olympians had no qualms about manipulating others, be those humans or beings like themselves, only with lesser powers. The one behind Zeus, oh, how they loved making people fall in love with them. And then they’d have their fun, and leave broken hearts behind, because those were messy and they didn’t want anything to do with that.” In earlier times, I might have spat on the floor. These days, I merely spit my words. 

Myka looks a little shell-shocked. “You… Zeus… What you’re saying is…”

“What I’m saying is that there was such a thing as gods, but they were a bit different from what’s written down,” I say kindly. 

“And you are one of them.” The way Helena says it, it’s far more of a statement than a question or, for that matter, a theory. 

“With very feeble powers, compared to some of the others,” I clarify. 

“Nevertheless, you are…” she swallows. 

“Kind of a let-down, isn’t it,” I laugh. 

“What kind of powers?” Myka asks. Her mind is full of conflicting colors, and I realize she’s still trying to mesh the fact that her favorite librarian is the same person as that mysterious friend that Helena told her about a few days ago, and might not even be a human person, at that.

“Oh, I guess Helena has a few theories as to those,” I smile.

Helena has moved quite a bit closer to Myka, obviously concerned about the latter’s discomfort. My smile widens when she takes one of Myka’s hands. 

“You are telepathic,” she begins, and I nod. “And… what’s the word – empathic, too, aren’t you?” I nod again. “And you use those gifts to...” she hesitates.

“Be the best friend I can be, to a person who needs a friend. Be they a kid growing up in troubled circumstances,” I nod at Myka, “or a homicidal, temporally displaced Englishwoman.” I grin at Helena.

“Not so homicidal, these days, you’ll find,” she replies diffidently, and it’s true – the potentialities I see around her today are much, much brighter than the blackness I saw in her on that first day. “Oh! And you can… transport yourself to other places, very fast,” she adds.

I laugh at that one. I do remember how intrigued she’d been at my quick arrival in Moscow. “True,” I say. 

Myka’s eyes grow wider, lime green confusion slowly morphing into blue-tinged acceptance. “And you don’t age,” she whispers. 

I nod. “Because technically, I’m non-corporeal. That’s also the reason behind the… ‘beaming’, I guess is the word these days.” Myka groans. I smile a reassuring smile. “I consider it the strongest of my powers, actually. Being corporeal takes _effort_. All those molecules! But it's worth it, for the hugs. I’m happy that I’m able to hug people.”

“Helena has told me about your hugs,” Myka says very softly. 

My eyebrows shoot towards my hairline. “Has she now?”

Myka nods. “She said they were like manna to a starving person.” She looks up at me then, and I can see her eyes are brimming. “You never hugged me,” she says, and her sadness is unlike Helena’s, much quieter and muted, but equally forceful, and equally self-contained. 

Wordlessly, I stand and spread my arms. She stares up at me, bafflement and disbelief staining her sadness dusty pink and neon yellow. Then she stares at Helena with much the same sentiment, when Helena pushes her slightly away and up. 

Biting her lip, and obviously against her better judgment, as she would call it, Myka Ophelia Bering stands up and finally, finally receives the hug that, for decades, I have wanted to give that scrawny kid, that awkward teenager, that lonely, hopeful lover of literature. Librarians don’t hug patrons, even when those patrons are kids. Librarians don’t kiss patrons, either. They give books instead of kisses, and recommend authors instead of hugging. But I’m not a librarian any longer. And so I hug Myka to me with my heart wide open, feel her heart stumble and open, feel her breath hitch and her emotions grow wide, feel her fingers clench around the fabric on my back, feel tears stain the fabric in front as she realizes that she was never quite as lonely as she had thought. 

“Why... why didn’t you ever-?” she asks my temple, and I lean back slightly so that our eyes meet, and she can see my truthfulness in them. 

“I can’t see just emotions, Myka. I can see potentialities. Possibilities. And I try to be the kind of friend that helps a person head towards the most promising potentials. But I also try to abstain, very much, from choosing people’s actual paths for them, you understand?” I wait for her nod, then go on, “I knew you were lonely, sometimes desperately so. I knew that things weren't rosy at home for you. But I also could see, quite clearly, that you would make your way regardless. You,” I smile at her, “didn't need that kind of help from me. You, on the other hand,” I turn my head and smile at Helena now, so she understands the sentiment behind my next words. “You, my friend, were a mess.” One dark eyebrow comes up so sharply I can’t help but chuckle. “The possibilities crowding around you were…” It doesn’t happen often, but I’m at a loss for words, my hands gesturing vaguely, trying to shape the billowing, towering blackness in my memory's eye. 

“Dark,” she says simply, and I nod. She has seen them, after all.

“All of them,” I add. “Except there was this tiny, minuscule speck of hope that I tried to help you walk towards. Heavens, but it was so small.” I sigh deeply. “Always in danger of being swamped, extinguished, lost.” Helena looks at Myka, and it's breathtaking, the size, the gentleness, the fierceness of the love that glows in her. “You, my friend,” I nudge Myka’s shoulder with my own. “I’m talking about you.” 

She finally pulls away from me and turns to face Helena. “I… but… you…” 

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I half sigh, half laugh. “Haven’t you told her yet, Helena?”

“Told me what?” Myka’s eyes don’t leave Helena’s for a second. Their emotions, both sets of them, are a sight to behold. Myka’s realization is dawning, but she doesn't quite dare believe in it. But then she hasn’t had weeks to come to terms with the idea that one person can be what holds another person’s darkness at bay, has she? Helena, on the other hand, while aware of her feelings for Myka for a while now, has never allowed herself to let them shine forth, as it were, until now. 

“I love you, my Myka,” says Helena G. Wells softly. In my eyes, she is suffused with the soft glow of a million colors all uniquely hers. At their center lies the wealth and complexity that is how she sees Myka, and on the fringes, the slight silvery shiver of nervousness, at being so vulnerable. 

Myka’s colors, at first, still vibrate with yellow disbelief, though underlying it is a whirl of colors that, to her, represents Helena. The variance, and vibrancy of them is how I know these two are close; that whirl wouldn’t be this complex otherwise. And just like winter sunrise pours light across a landscape, turning blues and blacks into golds, and whites, and all the colors of the rainbow, so does realization flow across Myka’s understanding of Helena, and across Myka’s understanding of herself when it comes to Helena, and tints these understandings in a new light. 

When they hug, and when they kiss, their emotions so new and so fragile and so blissfully happy, I drink my fill, and then tactfully leave them. 

It’s what a friend does, after all.


	7. Postscriptum

I smile when I walk towards the wall made of corrugated iron. “You’ve changed, my friends. I haven’t seen you like this before.” I run my hand over the rough surface and recognize them immediately. They welcome me a bit like eager children, a bit like a comfortable leather comfort chair that, over time, has molded itself to fit-

“Hello, old friend,” Eirene says behind me. 

“Peace,” I reply as I turn to her. No matter which language, this exchange will not change. We always smile at it (I am, after all, old and friend, and she is peace), and a lot of the times, we smile at each other. As we do today. “I haven’t seen you like this before, either,” I continue, and my smile grows wider. “It suits you. So stern.”

She snorts a little, then holds out her arms. 

When we embrace, both of us feel the effects. I send her warmth, friendliness, support, and long, old familiarity. She sends me peace of mind, as she always does. People meditate, pray, take pills, work out. They wouldn’t need to, could they just hug Eirene. It’s not like I don’t need it, after what I just did. 

“They’ll live,” she says when she steps away from me, in reply to that thought. “It’s a shame,” she shakes her head, and that is a thought we have shared so often that I don’t even need to hear any other words in order to not misunderstand her. Shame that humans are so closed in. Shame that they need to make an effort to feel what someone else is feeling. 

“Yes,” I sigh deeply. “Especially when…” and that is a thought that she doesn’t need to hear expressed to its end, to know what I mean. Especially when they’re so marvelous. Don’t get me wrong – a lot of the Olympians (yes, Olympians. The names humans had given us had stuck - at least for us who'd stayed behind. Non-corporeal beings have no language, thus no names.) hadn’t cared about humans except for sport. But we aren’t all so selfish. Eirene and I, least of all, I’d wager. 

“How are the kids?” I ask. 

“Good, good,” she nods. “They are very happy with Claudia; they think she’s like a cool cousin.” She smiles indulgently. “They were so excited that both she and Helena could smell their apples. Not many people can.” 

“Another loss for humans,” I reply gravely. 

“I’m glad you found Helena,” Eirene says. “For her sake, and for ours. The Meliades and I can feel the people, you know, inside the bronze. You know they just want to be helpful. And while I can persuade them to not help people who are screaming themselves hoarse at infinity for punishment, it’s more difficult when someone is screaming herself hoarse for _self_ -punishment.” 

“I thought it might be something like that,” I say, “when she told me the story. I was quite sure that this MacPherson person couldn’t have gotten her out without at least some form of your permission.”

She tilts her head in acknowledgement. 

“But, really, Eirene,” I go on. “The bronze?”

“I know,” she sighs. “I know.” 

“Just kill these people, and be done,” I tell her. “I’ve never known you to not be ruthless if need be.”

“In the name of peace,” she sighs. 

I step a bit closer again, and touch her arm. “In the name of peace, yes.”

“I can’t, though, Philia, and you know it.” She steps away from my touch. “We’re Keepers, not killers. In the name of peace, we hold these artefacts within us, so that no one shall wage war with them.”

I sigh. “As they would.”

“As they would. As _we_ would, and well you know it.” She sighs too, then smiles at me. “Oh, Philia. You are a good friend, but-”

“A bad counselor, I know,” I grin. “I always counsel what would make you happiest.”

“Well, sometimes that’s not such a bad thing,” she replies.

“Sometimes.” Now I tilt my head at her. 

“Often,” she amends. “But you’re short-sighted. I have to look farther.”

“True.”

We are silent for a while, out here in the South Dakota sun. “Do you think she needs you, still?” Eirene asks me, then. 

I weigh my head. “It’s hard to say,” I reply. “She’s been alone so long. And now she’s in love, and it’s good for her-”

“ _Myka_ is good for her,” Eirene specifies.

“Yes. But it might not be enough. Sometimes a friend can do things for you that a loved one can’t.” I take a deep breath, and step away a little, ready to leave. “Well, if that happens, she – and you – know how to reach me.”

Eirene nods. “Peace be with you.” 

“And with you, old friend.”


End file.
